Wheels within Wheels Read online

  “This is where I live,” he said.

  “I know.”

  It was dark inside the building. A smell of damp rose from the small patioed courtyard. He turned the electric light switch. It flung a stage light on the solitary plantain tree that the arched doorway framed.

  “It’s a long climb,” he told her.

  She was breathless when they reached the top.

  “I’ll turn on the fire and then fix a highball.”

  The gas blazed merrily in its rough bar covering. He drew the divan in front of it. She looked round the studio. It was unlike any room that she had ever seen; but she could have no more said, “You’ve a nice place here,” than she could have expressed any conventional thanks for the invitation to the dance: than she could have opened the package that was clasped between her hands. He knew—he must know—what she felt without her telling him.

  From the kitchenette came the sound of chipping ice.

  “I won’t be a second,” he said.

  He handed her a glass. It was blue, so that she could not tell from the colour of the liquid what he had given her. She sipped. It was smooth, and sweetish.

  “This is good corn,” she said.

  “It’s supposed to be pre-prohibition,” he told her.

  She sipped again. It was different from the stuff they gave you at the barrel-house. You had to screw your face up after every mouthful. You only took it so as not to be a spoil-sport. The feeling you got from it was good; whatever the taste might be. But the actual taste of this was good.

  “I’m hot in these clothes,” he said. “Do you mind if I go and change them?”

  From the bathroom came the sound of splashing water. Drowsily, she gazed into the flickering fire. This moment had a completeness, a reality of happiness that she had never touched before.

  In a few moments he was back. He was wearing a silk dressing-gown, brown with small white spots. It had a scarf that knotted round his throat. He wore slippers of the same material. He settled himself beside her on the divan, as she had beside him at Joan Marlow’s studio on their first meeting. There was a standard lamp behind her head. He blinked as he looked at her.

  “That light’s shining into your eyes. No, don’t move. I’ll turn it down.”

  She rose to turn the switch. There was only the light from the fire now, a bar of orange flung from the kitchenette and the street lamps in Jackson Square stencilling the initials of Pontalba on the sloping ceiling. She stood above him. In the subdued light with his bright clothes of carnival set aside, it seemed to her that he looked tired: as though in the resumption of daily clothes, he had resumed troubles that beneath the bright finery he had momentarily forgotten: an immense tenderness, the flowering of her excitement and her happiness overcame her. Stretching out her hand she soothed his forehead softly as a nurse does, as though she would conjure away his trouble. With her hand still on his forehead, she sank on her knees beside him. Slowly, tenderly, protectively, she folded her arms behind his neck and lifted his face to hers.

  • • • • •

  Dawn was close when she stirred out of his embrace.

  “I must be going home,” she said.

  There was silence now in the streets of the old Quarter. There were no cars parked in front of the Cabildo. The solitary royal palm stood in aloof symbol against the sky. Carnival was over. Hoses were sweeping Canal Street of its masks and favours. The streamers of electric light no longer shone over the Maison Blanche and Holmes. In a few hours the Ash Wednesday bells would be tolling dismally across the square.

  “Let’s go to the market and get some coffee,” he suggested.

  The French women with the stiff winged caps of Normandy had not yet begun their thrifty raids upon the bright stalls of fruit and vegetables; the mandarins and carrots and sprays of kumquats; the strings of silvery onions and crates of purple egg plants; the brown rabbits hung in furry rows.

  The lovers sat in silence on their high stools, above the sanded floor while the vegetable trucks lined up along the docks.

  They could no more have spoken of what had passed between them than she could have spoken to him of his apartment: than she could have thanked him for the dance: than she could have opened the package in his presence. That night was a locked heirloom in their hearts. Her eyes were brimming and deep with tenderness.

  “Bless you for not spoiling it with words,” she thought.

  VI

  The return of the document with John Shirley’s signature had an appreciable effect on the readiness with which Frank Newton listened to his wife’s eulogies of the house with the private golf course. The house was, he was well aware, one of her many crazes. If unencouraged, she would lose interest in it within three months: if encouraged, within two. He usually followed with regard to her enthusiasms the advice of Arthur Clough:

  Thou shall not kill: yet needst not strive

  Officiously to keep alive.

  Occasionally, when the craze appeared harmless, he encouraged her for the amusement of observing the speed with which she abandoned whatever was made easy for her. She thrived upon opposition. She adored argument. She had no use for the friend who agreed with her. Frank Newton was convinced that she would never have become so excited about a house she had never seen had she not suspected it to be unattainable.

  As at any ordinary time it would have been.

  But this was not an ordinary time. It was the decisive period in Daphne’s life. The happiness of her whole life depended on what happened to her during the next few months. No pains should be spared at such a time. It was a time, also, at which it was easy to afford such pains. The world had recovered from its post-war troubles. The general strike had ended the wasteful contest between capital and labour that had made foreign investors nervous of British markets: that had made every experimentalist hesitate. Those days were over. Income tax was coming down. Stocks stood high. Money was in easy circulation. Prosperity had returned. The nineteen twenties, that decade of trouble, were at an end. Now, in the spring of 1929, the hour to take risks had come. Or rather, the hour at which what would ordinarily have been a risk was not a risk at all. And Frank Newton was inclined to think that a house in the country might be the solution of many of his problems.

  “You must make some inquiries,” he told her. “You must find out what chance there is of our getting rid of this house first.”

  This encouragement resulted in her informing Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl that she was interested in Appleton: would like to buy it: but would have to dispose first of her house in London. Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl asked whether it was her wish that they should place the Easton Square house on their books. She answered that it was. Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl expressed their willingness to send a representative round that morning. The representative was young, brisk, eager.

  “A delightful house, Mrs. Newton: a perfectly delightful house. We shall have no doubt I am sure of disposing of it for you. There could not be a better time to sell a house. Everyone’s making money. Ever since the general strike a boom’s been coming. It was overdue. We’ll have this house off your hands in no time. I envy you taking Appleton. A lovely place. If I may say so, it gives me a real pleasure to feel that it’s going to some one who’ll appreciate it: who’ll bring the best out of it. If there’s anything else I can do at any time…. No, not at all … a privilege.”

  That afternoon Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl wrote to Captain Stewart Fraser, thanking him for his introduction, explaining the situation, and stating that they would write again when business had materialized.

  Captain Fraser whistled. He had had no idea that she would bite so soon. It just showed the necessity of having a great many lines in the stream at the same time. You never knew when you would get a bite. Sometimes things would go so well that you would think you could slack off. Chance took its revenge on you if you did. Nothing would go right with you for weeks. Then again, however assiduous you had been, no luck would come your way for months. Y
ou would start feeling desperate: ready to run rash risks. But if you stayed steady, if you kept your head, all of a sudden one thing after another would start going the way you wanted it. One just had to keep throwing line out after line.

  He had never thought he would have any luck with Mrs. Newton. When Fanny Tudor had said “Now you must tell Mrs. Newton about that delightful place,” he had dodged it, as near as dammit. He would have so much rather talked to Mrs. Newton about herself. She was his type. He liked worldly women in early middle-age who had hardened on the surface: who were preoccupied with responsibilities, but underneath were warm and tender: waiting to sun themselves in a St. Martin’s summer. She was just his cup of tea. He would have liked to fling out the ground bait for a flirtation. His acquired training had prevented him, however. He had put a professional, not a personal record, on the recording disc of his conversation.

  He had half regretted it afterwards, as he had returned that evening from his club to his small bed-sitting-room in Curzon Street. He had need of colour. But he was glad now. The commission on the sale of a ten thousand pound house was five hundred pounds.

  Captain Fraser was not, however, the man to let his good fortune watch itself. The fish was nibbling but it had not bitten. It had to be brought ashore. There was another line to be thrown out. He looked at his watch. It was half-past ten. He was almost certain, at this hour, to find the man he wanted in the library of the Chatham Club.

  • • • • •

  He was right in his prophecy. With a tonic water at his side Major Sir Martin Fortnum was wondering whether he would go that afternoon to see Pauline Frederick at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire or Enid Bennett at the King’s Hall, Chelsea. A telephone call to the information bureau at Selfridge’s had instructed him that there were no other theatres at which he could see his favourite film stars in pictures that he had not already seen. The problem was exercising his undivided thought.

  He had no other problems. Short, square, red-cheeked, white-moustached, with a pigeon chest and a habit of giving his head abrupt, regular shakes to right and left, when he ate, talked and walked, he had retired in 1926 after thirty years’ consular service in the Orient, with a yearly pension of eight hundred pounds, a knighthood title, and the recognition of military rank for obscure war service in connection with the commissariat of local volunteers.

  During the long years of service he had looked forward to his retirement as a mussulman looks forward to the joys of Islam. It was to be a somewhat similar, an extremely material heaven: smart little dinners in Soho; stalls at the opera; supper parties at his flat; actresses. As a public official he had in the East been constrained to lead an exemplary life. His large house, his retinue of servants, his ample table, and well-stocked cellar had framed the most orderly hospitality. A little later, he had told himself, his time would come. He had listened with relish to young men’s stories of the favours that the young women of the hour accorded to their suitors. His eyes had brightened, his lips moistened. There had been nothing like that when he was young.

  The reality, however, was different from the dream. His importance vanished with his large house, his hospitality, his official post. In London there were too many hereditary titles for a knighthood to cut much ice. No one had heard of him. His pension had to be carefully husbanded. Young women had very large ideas of the hospitality that their middle-aged admirers must accord them. Nothing less than the Ritz if you were over fifty. Luckily for Martin Fortnum the stress of pursuit demanded at his age too heavy a toll of the joys of conquest. The game was frankly not worth the candle. In the autumn of 1928 Martin Fortnum was as disenchanted a man as was to be found in London.

  Mercily, when the night was at its blackest, day broke.

  Out of the west, from California, the sun came riding, in the form of talking pictures.

  Since science had allied upon the screen the human voice to the human form Martin Fortnum had known scarcely an unhappy hour. He had surrendered completely to the screen: or rather, to the screen’s heroines. The syrens of real life were denied him, but the more real syrens of art could be enjoyed from mid-day to mid-night for the outlay of a few shillings.

  The routine of his day was simple. He lived in his club. He was called at eight o’clock with tea, toast and orange juice: his “Chota Hazri.” He shaved, and dressed slowly. He reached the morning-room at ten. For half an hour he would study the morning’s news. Then he would turn to the entertainment column of The Times. He would consider what film stars were to be seen at the dozen main metropolitan cinemas. He would make a list of the film stars who did not figure on that list. He would then put through his morning call to the Selfridge information bureau to ask whether those stars were to be seen at any of the smaller suburban cinemas. Names and places would be supplied. Till half-past eleven he would weigh the claims of the separate rivals, setting the charms of the actress against the accessibility of her retreat.

  He lunched at a quarter to twelve: heavily. “A planter’s breakfast.” By one o’clock he was at the selected picture house. At the end of the first programme he would return to his club for tea. He would sit quietly for twenty minutes mentally rehearsing the details of the picture. He would then take his day’s exercise: a Turkish bath when it was wet, an hour’s walk when the day was fine. In the resting-room of the Turkish bath or in the library of his club, according to the way in which he had spent the afternoon, he would compare The Times with the Selfridge list of stars and cinemas; deciding where he would go after an early but ample dinner at his club.

  Practically every day of the week he went to a couple of pictures. That was the day’s routine; but it was lit, as routine may be for the adventurous, by glamour. His twice-taken decisions were matters of far more than preference. He had scarcely a friend in London. The figures of the screen were more real as persons to him than the acquaintances he gossiped with in his club and the fellow-campaigners who clapped him on the back in Piccadilly.

  “My dear old fellow. Fancy seeing you! How long is it since we’ve met? Twenty years? K.L. wasn’t it? Let’s drop into my club and have a gin pahit over it.”

  Such meetings never gave him such a thrill of a valued and mislaid friendship suddenly refound as did the recognition in some minor rôle of a faded favourite.

  He would say to Selfridge’s, “Where is Warner Oland acting?” in the same spirit that a man of many social ties will say, “I must really look up old so-and-so.” He knew much of a lover’s ardour on the day when he had eagerly rung up Selfridge’s to know where he could see Lilyan Tashman. He had seen her for the first time at the Tivoli the night before. The feelings with which he took the Tube to Balham on the following afternoon were very like those of the young lover as he calls on the lady who, the previous night, has taken his heart by storm. Will she really be as lovely as he had thought? Colours seen by candle-light did not look the same by day. Was he on the brink of a permanent enslavement? And the eagerness with which Major Sir Martin Fortnum would seekin distant suburban palaces the earlier films of his chief favourites had all the drama and uncertainty of gallantry: the charged excitement of the quest. In its different way his life was as emotional as ever in Malaya he had dared to dream it.

  The deliberation that Captain Stewart Fraser disturbed was in its last analysis an emotional one. A week earlier there would have been no doubt of his choice. He was Enid Bennett’s slave. He had seen all her old pictures: the majority of them several times. He was awaiting eagerly the release of her new film. In the interval, however, he had seen a new Pauline Frederick. He was now uncertain whether her dark mature attraction was not more persuasive. It was a lover’s predicament. He was glad of Martin’s entrance. He would value an impartial opinion.

  Fraser was in no mood, however, to give it.

  “I’m afraid I’ve never seen either of them. I’m a racing man. No time for any other relaxation. Don’t get enough leisure for that. I’ve an offer to put up to you. Like to earn a hundred pounds?”<
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  “Not if it means putting money on a horse.”

  “It means going round to a certain house-agent’s and saying you want a house in Knightsbridge.”

  “But I don’t.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Say you do. He’ll ask you what kind of house. You’ll say about ten bedrooms and three receptions.”

  “My dear fellow, what should I do with a house that size? My house in Ipoh …”

  “That’s nothing to do with it. You haven’t to do anything with it.”

  “Then why waste the agent’s time?”

  “Please listen. The agent will give you a list of houses. You’ll find fault for some reason or another with every one of them, till he shows you No. 21, Easton Square. Then you’ll say ‘Ah, Easton Square. I’ve always liked that Square.’”

  “I haven’t. I’ve hated it. I knew a girl once … well, never mind.”

  “Exactly. Never mind. You’ll say you like it. You’ll ask for an order to view. You’ll explain you’re just back from the East.”

  “But what shall I say I want a house that size for?”

  “Tell them you’re meditating matrimony.”

  “My dear fellow….”

  “Tell him you want to form a school for training film stars.”

  “Ah, well now, that, of course, really is….”

  Again Fraser interrupted him.

  “It doesn’t matter what reason you give. Say you think the house will suit you. Take the order to view. View the house. Like it. Go back to the house-agent. Say that you think it will do. Then let me know.”

  “Will that earn me a hundred pounds?”

  “Probably.”

  Martin Fortnum fixed on Fraser a perplexed belligerent stare. He liked the young fellow. He was impressed by the young fellow. There was that business of the Rolls Royce car that had brought him five ten pound notes. A hundred pounds was a hundred pounds, after all. But even so….